


threads of gold (on blue, on red)

by evocates



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Historical Accuracy, Historical References, Multiple and on both sides, hints of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lafayette before, during, and after the June Riots of 1832.</p>
            </blockquote>





	threads of gold (on blue, on red)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kikibug13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/gifts).



> Inspired by and based entirely on Daveed Diggs’s Lafayette, and Wallace Smith’s Enjolras. 
> 
> [This](http://images.playbill.com/ee_assets/Aiken/ameri/alfie/alfie-06.jpg) is Wallace Smith as Enjolras. The bad part of the picture is that it doesn't show his beautiful ponytail and curls, but it's the best one I could find online. (His voice is just absolutely stunning, though, and his performance is wonderful.)

There was a boy standing at the street corner. His cheeks were flushed with the same passion that made his voice echo down the street, a red so deep that it showed even through his dark skin.

He wore his red vest with gold threads with the same pride Lafayette once wore his blue and gold uniform. His long, dark curls were tied back into a ponytail, and that was achingly familiar too even though Lafayette's hair had long since turned white and had been cut too short for any kind of band to hold. 

(Ever since Austria. Ever since prison. A man does not forget how it felt to be dragged by his hair.)

Even his words are familiar. Revolution. The rights of all men. The boy waves a red flag in his right hand, and Lafayette could not help but remember that glorious moment when General Washington first raised Betsy Ross's new-made flag in front of his men.

Ah. So here was the difference: this boy is the leader of his band of brothers. Though Lafayette had men under his command, though he had felt the grief of knowing men who died due to his inability to keep them safe, he had never been much of a leader. He left the speeches to the General, the writing to Hamilton, and took their words into his own heart without knowing if the reverse ever occurred.

The boy finished his speech to the sound of cheering from the students around him. Beside Lafayette, a beggar spat on the ground.

"Pretty words won't get anyone food," the old man groused. There were deep lines etched on the edges of his tired eyes. Lafayette felt his heartstrings give a tug, and so he dropped a franc coin into the man's cup.

"Perhaps this might," he said. Without waiting for the man's reluctant thanks that he knew was coming, Lafayette headed for the boy. He leaned against his cane just a few feet away from the group of students and waited until he was noticed.

The boy had sharp, dark eyes. They were warm as he clasped one of his (men? friends? which word did this boy use in his own head for those who follow him?) on the shoulder, but they chilled the moment they turned to the old soldier.

"Marquis de Lafayette," he greeted coldly.

"Monsieur Lafayette," Lafayette corrected, because he gave up that particle long ago when it was a choice between having his life or to be called by 'de'. The decision had been easy. One of the few easy moments during that period of his life.

He smiled, banishing those shadows. "You have me at a disadvantage, Monsieur. You have my name, but I have not yours."

The boy raised an eyebrow. "What need has a Marquis of the name of a lowly street herald?"

"A herald!" Lafayette raised his eyebrow in kind, unperturbed by the boy's obvious dislike. "That's some confidence you have there!"

Before the boy can reply, one of his friends is pushing forward, anger clear in his face. "The people listen to us!" that boy declared. "You have no right to doubt us, Marquis!"

Lafayette had heard his title spoken with disdain many times, but never with such enthusiasm that it sounds almost like praise. He blinks, cocking his head to the side. _This_ boy had short-cropped hair and pale skin, and there was something almost puppy-like in his indignation. Lafayette stifled his laughter by biting down on the inside of his cheek. (A practice he learned in prison.)

“Forgive an old man’s cynicism,” he said, leaning forward on his cane. “But if there is anything I have learned, it is that the people’s attention does not guarantee much in the end.”

“Enjolras,” the first boy said abruptly. He strode forward, his red vest flapping in the summer breeze, the gold threads on his coat glinting in the sunlight. “My name is Enjolras.”

He hesitated for a moment before he inclined his head. “Monsieur.”

“Monsieur Enjolras,” Lafayette repeated. He bowed as well, an inch lower than he knew someone of his station should, but it had been long years since his station meant anything to him. He did not, however, stick out his hand to shake.

“It’s a pleasure.”

“What do you think of our speeches?” the second boy cut in before Enjolras could return the pleasantry.

“This is Marius Pontmercy,” Enjolras said. He was smiling from the side of his mouth, and Lafayette had to close his eyes at the sight. It reminded him far too much of how Washington used to smile at him; how Laurens used to smile whenever Hamilton was so caught up in his arguments that he began to rant.

All those men were dead by now, buried deep within earth an ocean away, too far for Lafayette to even touch their tombstones. But he remembered, nonetheless.

(There was no sea in Paris. But, sometimes, Lafayette looked towards the direction of America and closed his eyes. If he concentrated, he could almost smell the scent of the sea, and so could practically pretend that he could still hear the echoes of their voices carried by the wind. Or even the cold sharpness of engraved tombstones.)

“Monsieur Pontmercy,” Lafayette greeted, and he plastered a smile on his face as he looked at the boy. He suspected that Enjolras’s eyes were far too sharp, for there was suddenly a frown between his brows, but he ignored him for a moment as he contemplated what to say.

“You speak of things near and dear to my heart,” he said quietly. “Yet, at the same time, you speak of things that I have grown to fear.”

“The people have the right to rule themselves,” Enjolras said. It was a statement, not an argument.

“They do,” Lafayette nodded. “But your ways will have the streets of Paris covered once more in blood.” He paused, and looked into Enjolras’s eyes. “You do not remember that, Monsieur, but I do.”

“Blood spilled for justice is blood worth spilling,” Enjolras said.

Lafayette smiled once more, because he remembered having said such things. But there was also this: a day when the sun beat down hard and unforgiving; the screams of men as they twitched on the ground, dying from heatstroke or gunshots or both at the same time; the sick, rotten eggs stench of gunpowder, the smoke of it turning the world grey; red on grass, red on pavement, red staining the soil. Later: the smell of a medic’s tent, sickly with rot, the groans of dying men so thick to almost be a stench.

He remembered this too: the heads of people he once counted as acquaintances and friends, paraded outside the barred windows of his cell; the sound of buzzing flies as they landed on eyes once lively and bright; the broken pleas of men and women, echoing and echoing down the streets from the execution grounds; the clean slice of the guillotine, the sudden silence.

But these boys would not know those things. 

“If that is what you believe,” Lafayette said quietly. He met Enjolras’s gaze once again, holding onto the eyes of the boy with gold threads that were so much like his own a long time ago.

“Yet war is terrible, Monsieur,” he continued, “especially waged amongst people who lived under the same flag. Even for justice, even for France, blood of Frenchmen spilled by Frenchmen is still a terrible thing.”

Marius’s eyes brightened, and he started forward. But Enjolras held out a hand, and the boy stilled.

“Your warning is appreciated, Monsieur,” Enjolras said. “But none of us are afraid of death.”

No, Lafayette thought. They were not. They had not learned how to be afraid of such a thing.

He wondered, briefly, if Enjolras had even considered the possibility that he was not merely talking about the blood of the boys being spilled. The National Guard were Frenchmen too. Louis-Philippe, their King of only two years, was a Frenchman too.

It was so much easier when his friends were American and his enemies were British. Perhaps the lines drawn were merely in the sand, easily washed away by tides of blood, but they were lines. There were lines. Now there were none.

“I hope you will never have a chance to test that knowledge,” he says. Then, before Enjolras could speak further, Lafayette inclined his head again.

“Good day, Monsieur,” he said, and left.

***

A month later, he took his carriage down to the streets when he first heard the gunshots began. He called for calm even though he knew that he would not be listened to – he was too old, and the title of ‘Marquis’ was a noose that strangled his voice.

So he went home; he went up to his bedroom. (Only his now since Adrienne’s death.) He knelt at the corner of his bed, resting his elbows on the covers, and he prayed.

He did not pray for the boys to succeed. He knew they would not.

Instead, he prayed for their quick and easy deaths. It would be the most merciful thing.

***

The day after, he walked from his house to the Rue de Villette, ignoring the pain of his knees and feet. That was nothing compared to what he had gone through; besides, it would not be appropriate to call for a carriage for this particular errand.

He stood at the mouth of the street, and stared at the remnant of yesterday’s barricades, yesterday’s hopes: a few pieces of charred furniture riddled with holes, falling apart. A piece of wood creaked in a gentle breeze and, as Lafayette watched, it broke off from the chair it was part of, and clattered down to the ground.

There were women scrubbing blood from the cobblestones, and the lye soap they used diluted the colour until they were a particular shade of pink that reminded Lafayette strangely of a particular coat one of his dear friends liked to wear. He swallowed down a sudden urge to laugh, instead casting his eyes around himself.

Here, in the corner: a cart. He walked towards it.

One never got used to the sight of dead bodies. Lafayette leaned against his cane, then the wall, as he stared at the two within the cart. Here was Enjolras, sprawled with his arms flung out and his eyes wide open, staring into nothingness. His dark eyes, so lively even the day before when Lafayette saw him command his (men? friends? he still did not have an answer to that question, and knew he never would now) and handing them guns. 

Lafayette swallowed. He reached out and closed those dull, blank eyes with a trembling hand.

Beside him was a little boy. His eyes were closed, and his limbs looked strange: as if he had been laid out properly at rest before he was dumped unceremoniously into the cart. Lafayette had not seen him before, but he knew _what_ he was, at least: a gamin, one of those children unceremoniously thrown into the streets by their parents, scraping in whatever ways they could to survive.

What was he doing here? What was he doing at the barricades? Lafayette did not know. He wished he did, somehow.

He rearranged the boy’s limbs. Now, like this, it looked as if he was merely sleeping. The sleep of the dead which one could never wake from, but… a form of sleep, nonetheless. It was all he could do.

Lafayette turned to Enjolras. He did not try to move him from the position he died in, because it was fitting. But there was a thread coming loose from his vest, right at one of the bullet holes that had gone through his chest. The gold was almost buried in the red; Enjolras was surrounded by red – his blood, his flag, his clothes.

Reaching out, Lafayette tugged the thread free. It unwound on his palm, red streaked with gold. He looked down on Enjolras again: even with his eyes closed, the boy did not look like he was sleeping. He looked like he was dead.

Closing his eyes, Lafayette pocketed the thread. He would stitch it to his old uniform. He brought that out enough to look at that he would never forget this boy. Enjolras would live on for a few years more in the mind of an old revolutionary. Lafayette hoped that he would not be offended that said revolutionary was also an aristocrat.

He looked at the cart once more. He walked away.

There wasn’t anything else he could do. 

In France, there never was.

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> I went to see _Les Mis_ on Broadway three times. Wallace Smith made me like Enjolras. Also, _Les Mis_ is right next to _Hamilton_. So when I stage-door one, I essentially end up stage-dooring both. Also, in the Brick, Hugo referenced Lafayette at least ten times. Also, Lafayette _was_ actually at the June Riots in history.
> 
> All that, and [kikibug13's](archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13) remark that Lafayette and Enjolras should meet, ended up with me writing this fic.
> 
> Yeah.


End file.
